


Dear Rhett

by beardnbeans



Category: GMM, Rhett & Link
Genre: CW: alcohol, GMM - Freeform, Good Mythical Morning - Freeform, Link Neal - Freeform, M/M, randl, rhett mckaughlin, rhink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25266619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardnbeans/pseuds/beardnbeans
Summary: Link writes Letters to Rhett that he will never read.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal, Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	1. I will never tell you this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link finds himself drunk off Rum in the bathtub on his honeymoon.

Dear Rhett,

I can’t help but wonder if i have been cursed to love you from afar for several lifetimes because this longing in my chest has been accruing for far longer than thirty years. I feel eons worth of desire for you and yet, in this life I am dammed to sit on my hands. Dammed to hold your ghost and never your body. When you look at me like I hung the stars in the sky, it heals all of the damage within me; I will never tell you this. I will never tell you that I wish I knew how it feels to hold the small of your back while we sway in your kitchen to Merle Haggard. Or that I so desperately wish to know how it feels to hold your hand and know that my love seeps all the way to the bone. But at night when I’m haunted by the fantastic murals of our past I can’t help but hope that somewhere, sometime there’s a version of me that knows what your mouth tastes like. Sometimes this thought is the only thing that brings me comfort as I could damn near go mad for wanting you. These thoughts and feelings bubble up in my throat like reflux and often the only thing that can stifle them is rum. I feel it in my wrists and my toes, this achey regret that turns my joints into brick. It’s the knowledge that I should’ve married you. This mistake that i made that tears and drink and blood will never reverse. I will never tell you this. I will sit on my hands and I will drink, but I will never tell you this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love me some love sick Link


	2. I love you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link tells Rhett that he loves him for the first time.

Dear Rhett, 

Last Friday was the first day I told you that I loved you without buffering the statement with the notion that we are brothers. Since then this has become something that we say. There is no big show of regression or withdrawal, it is simply an assertion. With this new found blasé I can’t stop myself from saying it; from shouting it at the top of my lungs: Rhett Mclaughlin I love you! Those three words that until recently I don’t think I ever truly told them to you. At least not in the way that I so deeply meant it. I can’t help but feel that with each new admission a part of me, the part of my heart that you have always inhabited, is withering. Each new statement is a reminder of my desperation and of your dismissal. The thing that is now hanging over my head the same way that the need to clarify our brotherhood used to, is that no matter many times it tumbles from my mouth, you do not feel this for me. When you tell me you love me, although the vocalization is no longer present, the sentiment that we are, and have always been, brothers still is. I feel disgusted by my need for you. My need to have you in all the ways that your wife has. I crave you, and I dream of you. Every day that I have to sit next to you and take in your presence I am both revitalized and destroyed and I don’t know how that could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is now a series I love writing Link like a love sick Jane Austin.


	3. Forgive Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link writes a letter to Rhett as he sits at his bedside at the hospital.

Dear Rhett, 

Today you injured your back and you were taken to the hospital. I received a call from your wife that you were in terrible pain and the only thing you were asking for was my presence. You sent your scathing wife from the room and instead begged her to ensure my arrival. And of course, because it was you, I dropped everything and hurried as fast as I could. Next to your bedside, you were already high from the drugs they’d fed into your system, I sat waiting for you to wake up. I watched you stir in your sleep and mouth words that I could not understand. For a moment, all at once, you opened your eyes and saw me. You saw me next to your bed with eager, worried eyes, and you did something that I shall cherish and remember for the rest of my life. It was simple and you did not think much of it, but know that if i die tomorrow I will die happy. You grasped at my hand, and when I relinquished it to you, you smiled. You mouthed “I love you”, and as quickly as you had awoken you were pulled back under the morphine. I couldn’t stop the tears the pooled in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. To anyone passing by it would seem as though I was watching my lover die, but I have always been dramatic. And for what I did next, I’ll never be forgiven. Under the eyes of god I pressed my lips to the corner of your mouth, and you did not stir. I relished in the moment. Your warm rough skin against my lips tasted like peace and guilt. I hope that you can forgive me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really liked this chapter. It’s minimal but I think there’s some plot developing.


End file.
